[Open] Science Sunday – 11.10.09

This week’s science reading list brought to you through the magic of the internet, bloggers and Open Access.

There’s been a lot going on this week, starting with the Nobel Prizes, and of course, NASA’s quest for a watering hole. That of course, does not mean that other interesting things did not pop up on my reading list.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was jointly awarded to Charles K Kao for his work on the use of fibre optics for communication and to Willard Boyle and George Smith for the invention of the CCD sensor (charge-coupled device) , which can convert light signals into electronic signals. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A Steitz and Ada E Yonath for their work on the ribosomes. And the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Elizabeth H Blackburn, Carol W Greider and Jack W Szostak for their work in chromosomes, and the enzyme telomerase. I particularly liked the emphasis placed by Carol Greider on the importance of ‘curiosity-driven” research (read about it here).

There were another few fun things this week. There was the 3D description of the human genome (great post by Brandon Keim on Wired Science), the image gallery from the Nikon Small World competition are absolutely amazing, and lastly a nice article got published in PLoS One about the growth of Archaeopteryx, which is nicely discussed by Michael Ryan on his blog.